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Re: What exactly does .NET do

.NET is a platform so it encompasses many components. One of those components is the .NET class library. Just as VB6 has libraries that are not part of your application but are installed once and used by many applications, so the .NET Framework includes numerous DLLs that contain types and members accessible to all .NET applications. For instance, all the controls (Buttons, TextBoxes, Labels, etc) that you might place on a form in a Windows Forms application are defined in the System.Windows.Forms.dll library.

The .NET Framework also contains the JIT compiler. When you build a .NET project into an EXE, that EXE contains CIL code, which is something like Java bytecode. When you run the app, the JIT compiler actually processes the CIL and generates machine code as required. The Framework also includes other components and the .NET platform more besides, but those are the two main ones that application developers should be aware of.

.NET is also the developer platform of choice for Microsoft these days. As such, developers looking to use Microsoft tools and technologies will tend to gravitate towards it, unless they feel that they have a reason not to. Such reasons might be that they need to low-level power that C++ offers or that they are already entrenched in VB6 development.

Speaking of VB6, why is this question posted in the VB6 forum? There are a number of .NET-specific forums on this site. I have asked the mods to move this thread to .NET Architecture & Design.

Re: What exactly does .NET do

What exactly does .NET do

It's confusing people........

One System to rule them all, One IDE to find them,
One Code to bring them all, and to the Framework bind them,
in the Land of Redmond, where the Windows lie
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People call me crazy because i'm jumping out of perfectly fine airplanes.
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For health reasons i try to avoid reading unformatted Code

Re: What exactly does .NET do

A lot of things are confusing if you don't bother to learn about how they work.

Not what i meant: The OP has questions about .NET, and posts it in VB6

The most spoken language in the world is Mandarin (=Chinese), but i don't bother to learn it.....

One System to rule them all, One IDE to find them,
One Code to bring them all, and to the Framework bind them,
in the Land of Redmond, where the Windows lie
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
People call me crazy because i'm jumping out of perfectly fine airplanes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For health reasons i try to avoid reading unformatted Code

Re: What exactly does .NET do

I'm certainly no expert on this low-level stuff, but it's my understanding that .NET is a fundamentally different object instantiating architecture from COM. And I assume this is posted here because barryalen1992 is attempting to understand the core low-level differences between .NET and COM.

There are many articles about these distinctions. However, in broad brushstrokes, as I understand it, when objects are instantiated with COM architecture (VB6, all of the VBAs, etc), the objects have an internal counter for how many external references (i.e., object variables) are using that object. And, when that internal count goes to zero, the object is uninstantiated.

Now, in .NET, I don't know if there's an internal counter or not, but that's not how it works. Somehow (and I don't know the details of this), these instantiated objects do queries to see if anyone is still using them. And, if there's no reply to the query, after some period of time, they uninstantiate themselves. I know I've simplified too much, and I'm sure others will probably outline this in more details. Also, the approach taken by .NET is often called "managed" whereas the COM approach is called "unmanaged". I've got no idea why COM objects would be considered unmanaged, but that's the way Microsoft promoted things.

Maybe That'll Help,
Elroy

Any software I post in these forums written by me is provided “AS IS” without warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, and permission is hereby granted, free of charge and without restriction, to any person obtaining a copy. Please understand that I’ve been programming since the mid-1970s and still have some of that code. My contemporary VB6 project is approaching 1,000 modules. In addition, I have a “VB6 random code folder” that is overflowing. I’ve been at this long enough to truly not know with absolute certainty from whence every single line of my code has come, with much of it coming from programmers under my employ who signed intellectual property transfers. I have not deliberately attempted to remove any licenses and/or attributions from any software. If someone finds that I have inadvertently done so, I sincerely apologize, and, upon notice and reasonable proof, will re-attach those licenses and/or attributions. To all, peace and happiness.

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